1996 RUG Conference

Summary

The 1996 RTAP User's Group (RUG) Meeting was held in Banff, Canada, March 11 through March 13. The RUG meets yearly to discuss, among other things, product direction, various applications of RTAP, and any special user concerns.

This year's meeting was organized over two and a half days:

March 11

A presentation by representatives of Computerized Processes Unlimited, a presentation by HP on RTAP status and direction, and a user question and answer session.

March 12

Presentations by representatives of California Water Company, Allen/Bradley, and Xytech, followed by the RUG Business Meeting.

March 13

Presentations by representatives of Shell UK and Rust Engineering

This year's conference was another great success. Many thanks to Alison Pomeroy and Gary Biagioni of tesserNet for all of their hard work in putting together such a worthwhile two and a half days.



March 11, 1996

The first day consisted of one presentation by a System Integrator, a presentation by HP on RTAP status and direction, and a user question a nd answer session. The first presentation was given by Thomas Accardo of Computerized Processes Unlimited (CPU). The presentation detailed two of CPU's most recent products: Rtap2Pi and The CPU Trender. Rtap2Pi is CPU's product that "glues" RTAP to a commercially available long term data storage system called PI, available from Oil System's Incorporated (OSI). Thomas also discussed a plotting package available from CPU. This package can hook up to any data source and plot pens on multiple graphs. Currently the plotting package has been implemented with hooks into the RTAP Database for real-time trends and into the PI system for plotting of long-term history data.

The talk given by HP on RTAP status and direction on was one of the meeting highlights. Ron Dernyk (The RTAP R&D Product Manager) spoke of three major areas of RTAP related enhancements. The first announcement was that HP has incorporated CPU's SCL(R) product into RTAP and HP will be selling the SCL(R) product. SCL(R) is built on top of the Tcl/Tk toolkit and consists of a one-to-one mapping between Tcl and the RTAP API. Using SCL(R) makes programming with the RTAP API considerably easier and vastly reduces development time.

HP's second announcement is that they are working on a product called Enterprise Link that is to be released Q3 96. Enterprise Link is designed to allow companies to easily transfer process control information to other areas of the business enterprise, as well as handle information flow from other business systems to the RTAP Database. In this way, recipe information can be passed from a document control system to the RTAP system. A business application (connected to control information via the Enterprise Link) would also be able to generate a report based on certain control objectives, e.g.., create a report when x% enrichment is attained over a period of y hours. HP believes the new software paradigm is object oriented component software. What this means to Calgary Product Development Center (CPDC) is that they don't have to create a product that is "all things to all people". Their mission is to create the ability to link RTAP (CPDC referred to RTAP as their "crown jewel") to all other layers of systems necessary for a "business enterprise" to operate successfully.

HP's third announcement is that they are porting the RTAP Core to the NT platform. The RTAP Core is the RTAP Database, RTAP API, Alarm Manager and Data Acquisition (Scan Tasks) functions. HP envisions PC clients connecting to RTAP on a server running NT or UNIX getting their RTAP information via OPC (OLE for Process Controls). OPC is an interface being developed by Microsoft and others to provide a standard interface for software developers. HP announced availability of the NT version of RTAP in Q1 97.

Hardware developers are supposed to provide OPC compliant drivers so that software developers don't have to care about data sources. HP is not porting RtapSchematX to the PC. They expect to team with a PC based display server and are unwilling to name possible sources. HP will be in a position to announce a compatible PC display client in about 4 months. Until then, one can only speculate.

The late afternoon of day one was a question and answer session chaired by HP. Most users asked questions about the port to NT and the Enterprise Link product's affect on support of the existing client base running on UNIX platforms. HP assured us that they plan to support and enhance UNIX based systems, as well as NT systems for the foreseeable future.

Monday evening a "Casino Night" and dinner were given for all RUG delegates and their guests. This allowed delegates to meet with other RTAP Users, System Integrators, as well as reconnect with the RTAP developers from Calgary. In a scene highly reminiscent of last year's Murder Mystery Dinner, yet an other Biagioni came away with a nice prize. Some of us have considered changing our last names for next year's conference to see if we might win...



March 12, 1996

The second day of the conference consisted of presentations by representatives of California Water Company, Allen/Bradley, and Xytech, followed by the RUG Business Meeting.

Richard Yee, of California Water Company presented a World Wide Web Application capable of monitoring and simple maintenance of Cal. Water's RTAP based SCADA system. Richard created an application that allows views of RTAP Schematics via a Netscape browser. This enables technicians at California Water Service to remotely view the status of water tank levels and alarms at sites throughout Central and Southern California. Additionally, a technician is able to edit the RTAP Database through the browser. Richard wrote all the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) necessary for creating his Home Page, as well as all the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts necessary to implement the Server side of the application. He also described an implementation of RTAP alarming that triggers Alpha Pagers when specified alarm conditions exist. The ability to page technicians when alarm conditions exist and allow them to monitor and maintain the Supervisory System from remote locations increases Cal Water's ability to respond quickly and efficiently to off-normal conditions.

The technical person originally scheduled to give the talk for Allen/Bradley was unable to attend the conference. The presentation was given instead by a non-technical member of the staff. He gave the first half of the presentation which outlined Allen/Bradley's products. He showed the first few slides of the technical presentation on configuring scan tasks and then advised the audience to contact the original presenter for questions regarding scan tasks.

Myron Selby of Xytech presented a Failover System implementation currently in use by Interprovincial Pipeline Company (IPL). RTAP does not provide hooks for redundancy. Failover requirements are typically quite different from one system to another, which makes Redundancy a very difficult feature for RTAP to provide that simultaneously meets several user's needs effectively. Xytech's failover strategy for IPL was a collaboration between IPL, Xytech, tesserNet and CPDC. The failover solution was based on RTAP's powerful notion of Alarm Classes and used many features provided by the RTAP Database as well. The failover implementation presentation was quite useful as it provided a detailed view of one way to exploit the flexibility of RTAP to provide a customized failover capability.

The RUG Business Meeting was held late in the afternoon. New officers were elected and arrangements for next year's conference were discussed. RUG delegates concurred that the Company Information Forms that each company filled out at the beginning of the conference were beneficial and should be used again next year. The forms indicate which parts of RTAP the company uses, the company's industry and any other custom applications that may be of interest to a wider audience.


March 13, 1996

The last day of the conference was a morning session only. Two presentations were given. The first was given by Shell UK EXPRO (Exploration and Production) and the second by Rust Engineering. The Shell presentation was given by George Mager and Ian Langmead on their RTAP system that manages oil and gas production in the North Sea. This presentation showed a planned migration from an existing system consisting of 150,000 data inputs to an RTAP system with approximately the same number of inputs over a two and a half year time scale. The migration began in January 1996 and will be complete in June 1998. One of Shell's main technical challenges was overcoming the problems inherit in dealing with satellite propagation delay. This was a very interesting presentation of how RTAP can be applied to solve the challenges of the off-shore oil and gas production industry.

The last presentation was given by Bob Gellings of Rust. Rust focuses on MES (Manufacturing Execution System) integration with RTAP. Rust has be en working with HP and SAP on the Enterprise Link product announced during the conference. The presentation focused on the software and hardware components needed to integrate with Enterprise Link.

Minutes

March 12, 1996

Banff, Alberta

  1. Review of Previous Minutes The minutes of the last general meeting, of March 17, 1995, were adopted as presented.
  2. Financial Statements The financial statements for 1995 and preliminary conference revenue/expense summary were adopted as presented.
  3. RUG Brochure Gary Biagioni presented a draft copy of the new RUG brochure for feedback. Direction was given to drop references to free in case we decide to charge for memberships later. Gary will proceed with finishing off the brochure and getting copies printed for HP to include in their product information. Funds were allocated in 1995 to cover the cost of printing. Bert Stipelcovich, Jim Bassich, and Richard Yee will review the final format before printing. No other promotional items (mouse pads, key chains, etc.) will be prepared at this time.
  4. Web Page A world wide web page, with links to and from HP/RTAP was created by CPU. It is at www.rug.org, and members are requested to give it a try and pass comments back to CPU. Jim Bassich is willing to provide the services of Vanessa Wilburn to coordinate the development and administration of the page for the time being, and will provide an estimated budget once the actual costs are better understood.
  5. E-mail List It was agreed that mail list members must be RUG members, subject to any criteria set out by the society. Every attendee at the 1996 conference will automatically be added to the mail list. The default reply to will be set as the whole list, once the administration of the list is automated.
  6. Newsletter Bob Gellings will compile the newsletter. Each presenter will provide him with a short abstract of their paper. CPU will provide an SLC announcement. Alison Pomeroy will provide a write up of the fun casino night. HP (Tom Hutchinson) will provide a sum mary of the Q&A session and their technical and business presentations. Kim Cupps will provide a short summary of the conference itself.
  7. RUG Conference 1997 The 1997 RUG Conference will be held in Banff again, on a Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday in May, with March as a second choice, subject to the cost of rooms and the availability of the hotel and conference facilities. (Note, following the business meeting, March 3,4,5, 1997 tentatively booked, due to high room costs in May.) Product exhibits will be left until we have more end users in attendance. Registration will begin the night before (Sunday), with some location identified as the gathering place for early arrivals. The current 2 day format will be used again next year. Hotel rooms will be blocked out for the Saturday and Sunday nights, in addition to Monday and Tuesday. The company information gathering form will be updated to include End Users vs. Integrators, company address, and a contact e-mail address. The conference registration form will include a short company biography. The attendee list will be provided to the presenters just before the conference, in case it affects the content of their presentation.
  8. Conference Attendance Guidelines Policies regarding registration, cancellation, etc. were discussed to provide guidance to the Conference Coordinator, who retains responsibility to invoke them at his discretion. HP RTAP developers may attend for free, but HP will continue to pay for their meals. Membership conditions discussed but not changed. We will register with Visa Mastercard and/or American Express, to allow attendees to pay at the time of registration. All registrations should be received and paid in full one month in advance, after which the costs is $100 higher. Cancellations between 14 and 30 days before the conference will be subject to a 50% fee. Cancellations later than 14 days prior to the conference will not be refunded. Substitutions, from the same company, will be allowed right up to the start of the conference. The 1997 fee will remain at $400 (Canadian). These registration and cancellation policies will be printed on the registration form.
  9. Election of Officers The following officers of the society were elected.
  10. European RUG Ian Buffey will represent us at the European RUG meetin gs and provide a summary of this conference to them.
  11. Acknowledgments The RUG organization expressed their appreciation to the past members of the executive committee. Appreciation was also expressed to Alison Pomeroy for her work in organizing this conference. A $100 gift certificate will be given to her.

Respectfully submitted,

Dave Milton,
Secretary/Treasurer